Quotes About Greed And Selfishness

#1. Greed and selfishness do seem to be central motivators of mankind.

Raymond Khoury

#2. Short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things ...

Theodore Roosevelt

#3. As time goes on we get closer to that American Dream of there being a pie cut up and shared. Usually greed and selfishness prevent that and there is always one bad apple in every barrel.

Rick Danko

#4. Very unfairly, there's a negative image of the kid, which really stems from the greed and selfishness of the NBA and NCAA. They're forcing these kids to go to school.

Sonny Vaccaro

#5. People's lives are filled with vice and the trappings of it. Ambition, greed and selfishness all have to do with vice. Sooner or later, you have to see through it or you don't survive.

Bob Dylan

#6. The Reagan-Bush years have exalted private gain over public obligation, special interests over the common good, wealth and fame over work and family. The 1980s ushered in a Gilded Age of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect.

William J. Clinton

#7. Undoubtedly there are, in connection with each of these things, cases of fraud, swindling, and other financial crimes; that is to say, the greed and selfishness of men are perpetual.

William Graham Sumner

#8. One of the most painful things in the Western States and Territories is the extinction of childhood. I have never seen any children - only debased imitations of men and women, cankered by greed and selfishness, and asserting and gaining complete independence of their parents at ten years old.

Isabella Bird

#9. Motives for greed and selfishness are often attributed to toil and source of riches.

Michael Bassey Johnson

#10. If we confuse material illusions with spiritual purpose, then we'll be lost in the fire of desire, which increases through the emotions of greed and selfishness.

Daniel Marques

#11. The Bible warns us against greed and selfishness, it does encourage frugality and thrift.

Billy Graham

#12. Kindness, love, patience, understanding, and unity will increase as we serve, while intolerance, jealousy, envy, greed, and selfishness decrease or disappear. The more we give of ourselves, the more our capacity to serve, understand, and love will grow.

CARLOS H. AMADO

#13. As long as greed is the root of all evil, there will not be peace.
Get rid of selfishness and greed too will disappear.

Zarina Bibi

#14. Look at the orators in our republics; as long as they are poor, both state and people can only praise their uprightness; but once they are fattened on the public funds, they conceive a hatred for justice, plan intrigues against the people and attack the democracy.

Aristophanes

#15. Independence that has declared its 'independence' from the sure and certain compass of sound morals is nothing more than rogue greed having scantily dressed itself in the garb of independence while running off the cliff of anarchy.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

#16. I am thankful that I can be thankful, for if thankfulness did not exist my heart would be irretrievably imprisoned by the crazed twins of acquisition and possession, and my soul would exist as a forever slave to greed.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

#17. The age of selfishness and greed is over. The age of kindness and generosity is underway.

Laurence Overmire

#18. The 20th century has been marked by cynicism, selfishness, greed, and the desire to please, all without changing the status quo. In the 21st century, we must resurrect solidarity and compassion.

Oscar Arias

#19. True happiness comes from having a sense of inner peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved by cultivating altruism, love and compassion, and by eliminating anger, selfishness and greed.

Dalai Lama

#20. I cannot calculate nor attempt to manage sacrifice, for to do so is to attempt to sacrifice comfortably. And it is in the attempt to sacrifice comfortably that I begin to realize that the desire for comfort is in reality the demand that I put myself first, and there is nothing of sacrifice in that.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

#21. Declare your jihad on thirteen enemies you cannot see - Egoism, Arrogance, Conceit, Selfishness, Greed, Lust, Intolerance, Anger, Lying, Cheating, Gossiping and Slandering. If you can master and destroy them, then will be ready to fight the enemy you can see.

Al-Ghazali

#22. Selfishness and greed, individual or national, cause most of our troubles.

Harry Truman

#23. To be blessed and yet permit gluttony to blind me to the blessings is to banish myself to a life of unrelenting poverty even though I might be utterly engulfed in the embrace of a million marvelous blessings.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

#24. Selfish needs, wants, and desires needed to be obliterated. Greed, overindulgence, and gluttony had to be expunged from human behavior. The solution was in self-control, in minimalism, in sparse living conditions; one simple and a brand-new dictionary filled with words everyone would understand.

Tahereh Mafi

#25. The organization and constant onward sweep of this movement exemplifies the resentment of the many toward the selfishness, greed and the neglect of the few.

John L. Lewis

#26. Carley saw two forces in life--the destructive and constructive. On the one side greed, selfishness, materialism: on the other generosity, sacrifice, and idealism.

Zane Grey

#27. Even through you and I are in different boats, you in your boat and we our canoe, we share the same river of life. What befalls me befalls you. And downstream, downstream in this river of life, our children will pay for our selfishness, for our greed, and for our lack of vision.

Oren Lyons

#28. What is the authority in your life? Is it your selfishness? Your lust? Your greed? Or have you turned it all over to God and said, "Lord, You are going to be my authority"? When you are under authority, you are then able to assume authority.

Billy Graham

#29. We're all basically made of the same stuff: generosity and selfishness, goodness and greed.

Madeleine M. Kunin

#30. I too often allow people to become a sterile commodity to be bartered in the service of my greed, and in doing something so absurdly reckless I foolishly barter away everything that meets my need.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

#31. Father argued that society as a whole must come to be organized on a different basis than greed, for while material interests gained somewhat by the institutionalized deification of pure selfishness, ordinary men and women lost everything by it.

Russell Banks

#32. And people like my father are the problem. Instead of helping others, people use the worst-case scenarios to excuse their own selfishness and greed.

Colleen Hoover

#33. Despite the voices of the culture that would scream otherwise, victory is irreparably tied to the surrender of self. And that explains why so few are truly victorious.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

#34. As utterly irrational as it might seem, the greed within me has the most limited vision I can possibly imagine as it has eyes only for the few things it doesn't have, and it is completely blind to all the many remarkable things that it does.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

#35. Let sincere men and women the world over unite in earnest effort to supplant feelings of selfishness, hatred, animosity, greed, by the law of service to others, and thereby promote the peace and happiness of mankind.

David O. McKay

#36. His eyes twinkled as he smiled. "Love everyone, serve everyone, and feed everyone. Serve like Hanuman without selfishness and greed. This is the key to realizing God.

Radhanath Swami

#37. A motto of many politicians, public servants and money bags: Ask not 'What can I do for you?' but 'What can I do you for?

H.M. Forester

#38. It is greed and laziness and selfishness, not hunger or weariness or cold, that take the dignity out of a man, and make him look mean.

George MacDonald

#39. [Y]ou possess all the attributes of a demagogue; a screeching, horrible voice, a perverse, crossgrained nature and the language of the market-place. In you all is united which is needful for governing.

Aristophanes

#40. I like to think that my arrogance, impetuosity, impatience, selfishness and greed are the qualities that make me the lovable chap I am.

Richard Hammond

#41. Because, Richard, many people must be ruled to thrive. In their selfishness and greed, they see free people as their oppressors.

Terry Goodkind

#42. I constantly pack my pockets full of worthless trinkets, and in such misguided gorging I leave my heart empty and my soul emaciated because I have forgotten everything but trinkets.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

#43. Contrary to popular opinion, we are all a vast brotherhood of human beings whose very survival hinges not on what we keep, but on what we give. And it is in the giving that we not only survive to live another day, but we thrive to celebrate another day.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

#44. If you can be free from pride, self-pity, self-centeredness, selfishness, jealousy, envy, intolerance, impatience, greed, gluttony, lust, sloth, arrogance, and dishonesty, then there is a state of serenity and connectedness within.

Russell Brand

#45. Everything - our houses, our clothes, our hairstyles - is meant to help us forget ourselves and to protect us from vanity, greed and envy, which are just forms of selfishness. If we have little, and want for little, and we are all equal, we envy no one.

Veronica Roth

#46. If you are not selfish and greedy, you picked up riches along the street.

Michael Bassey Johnson

#47. Though many intellectuals, following in the footsteps of Saints Augustine and Jerome, hold business people in contempt for their selfishness and greed, in fact a free market puts a premium on empathy.

Steven Pinker

#48. Instead of living to subdue the earth in love as God purposed, men have tried to subdue each other, by exercising lordship over people through selfishness, lust for power, greed, jealousy, wrath, hatred, murder and all malignant forms of sin.

Sunday Adelaja

#49. The Bible sees greed as a form of idolatry, because a greedy person worships things instead of God. Greed and envy have their roots in selfishness.

Billy Graham

#50. Love - massively destructive to hatred, selfishness and greed. Use liberally.

Cathryn Louis

#51. There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.

Samuel Johnson

#52. Selfishness creates greed and greed destroys the soul.

Zarina Bibi

#53. The more our hearts and minds are turned to assisting others less fortunate than we, the more we will avoid the spiritually cankering effects that result from greed, selfishness and overindulgence.

Joe J. Christensen

#54. Cultivate peace first in the garden of your heart by removing the weeds of lust, hatred, greed, selfishness, and jealousy. Then only you can manifest it externally. Then only, those who come in contact with you, will be benefited by your vibrations of peace and harmony.

Sivananda

#55. You may possibly become rich by just caring about yourself and what you want to gain from your profession and your life but you cannot possibly enrich the lives of everyone you meet that way.

Rasheed Ogunlaru

#56. There are so many ways a family can unravel. All it takes is a tiny slash of selfishness, a rip of greed, a puncture of bad luck. And yet, woven tightly, family can be the strongest bond imaginable.

Jodi Picoult

#57. The inescapable fact is that when we build a society based on greed, selfishness, and ruthless competition, the fruits we can expect to reap are economic insecurity at home and international discord abroad.

Tommy Douglas

#58. America wasn't perfect, but nothing touched by human hands could be. There was greed, corruption, selfishness, pettiness, hatred. But there were good things too. Freedoms, ideas, choices, hope and the possibility that anyone could be anything, here, if they were willing to strive for it.

Wildbow